Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism

ISBN-13: 9780199256419 / Angielski / Miękka / 2002 / 240 str.

David Scholsberg

Opis

In the first ever theoretical treatment of the environmental justice movement, David Schlosberg demonstrates the development of a new form of 'critical' pluralism, in both theory and practice. Taking into account the evolution of environmentalism and pluralism over the course of the century, the author argues that the environmental justice movement and new pluralist theories now represent a considerable challenge to both conventional pluralist thought and the practices of the major groups in the US environmental movement. Much of recent political theory has been aimed at how to acknowledge and recognize, rather than deny, the diversity inherent in contemporary life. In practice, the myriad ways people define and experience the 'environment' has given credence to a form of environmentalism that takes difference seriously. The environmental justice movement, with its base in diversity, its networked structure, and its communicative practices and demands, exemplifies the attempt to design political practices beyond those one would expect from a standard interest group in the conventional pluralist model.

Recenzje

David Schlosberg raises the issues of diversity, pluralism, and environmental politics in ways that compel attention. Careful and tightly argued, but also eloquent and readable, _Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism_ deserves a broad audience. While environmentalists have long understood that ecosystems thrive on diversity and require analytical and ethical frameworks to match, the metaphors have sometimes not been taken seriously enough in that other, stranger ecosystem - the social and political world. Schlosberg invites us to bridge the gap, to think politically about problems and solutions that can only, ever be political.